Karma Slaves
by Kaesteranya
Summary: Drabbles and flash fiction pieces for the Kokuyo Gang that is, Mukuro, Chrome, Chikusa & Ken , and all permutations of pairings and such therein. Most of them will be sad and introspective by nature.
1. Ctrl Alt Del

**Ctrl + Alt + Del.**

_This was written for the word prompt "needles" over at the KHR Fic Meme; the title is taken from the 31 Days theme for April 24, 2008. Special thanks to Nikki for doing the REAL archiving for all of us~_

_

* * *

  
_

It was an old, recurring nightmare, and the last remnant of the story he had chosen to walk away from after being dragged down through all the circles of Hell then lifted right back up, in an agony that people properly labeled "eternity" without actually knowing that they were doing it right. Mukuro told himself that he did not dream, and if anyone asked him, even if it was Chrome, he would tell them the same thing. He did not think he was lying. He was an illusionist. He could make something out of nothing. He could make fiction truth.

That did not, however, stop him from dreaming of bloodied tables, blinding floodlights, babbling voices just over the sound of his own breathing, harsh and ragged, ripping air in out of his lungs. He could retreat into his illusions all he wanted, but it would never stop him from remembering what it was like to feel leather straps biting into his wrists and measure the minute and almost poetic distance between his face and a needle before they sank it straight into his eye, permanently coloring his world in the shades of blood and birth.


	2. For I offer my worship only to you

**For I offer my worship only to you.**

_This was written for the word prompt "song" over at the KHR Fic Meme; the title is taken from the 31 Days theme for August 6, 2007. Special thanks to Nikki for doing the REAL archiving for all of us~_

_

* * *

  
_

She always felt his call more than heard it, but if anyone were to ask her what his summons was like, she would always find herself groping for analogies pertaining to touch and music: a warm feeling, a whisper-that-was-not-quite-a-whisper, crescendo switching octaves at the last possible minute, brush of a wing against her ear, a touch of whimsy and discordance. He beckoned to her, curled his consciousness around her thoughts, sending her running from wherever she was to find him. He always insisted that she need not come if she was terribly busy. She knew that this, like many other things about her master, was a beautiful lie.

"My dear Chrome, early as always."

A lush green field, an unbroken sky, birdsong. Their secret place, tucked within the recesses of her mind. Chrome stepped forward, greeting him with a smile.

"Mukuro-sama. You called?"


	3. Foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy

**Foul, fetid, fuming, foggy… filthy.**

_This was written for the word prompt "broken" over at the KHR Fic Meme; the title was taken from the 31 Days theme for June 9, 2007. Special thanks to Nikki for doing the REAL archiving for all of us~_

_

* * *

  
_

They would never discuss this in the future, and often go about with their business of rage and revenge and camaraderie via violence without so much as an afterthought to all that it took to bring them to the point they were at. It haunted them instead, through occasional nightmares and brief flashes of memory whenever either one of them spotted the most mundane things: a needle, a white coat, bathroom tiles, leather belts, squished fruits (especially if they happened to be red). Their brains, true to the strange way they were wired, replaced those things with empty doorways, bloody tiles, voices, piles of limbs that used to be children.

Fifteen years old, and both of them knew what it was like to have their spines broken and simultaneously feel someone carving the muscle out of their thighs or forearms with scalpels and without painkillers, or what it was like to drift in and out of drug-induced sleep on a hard floor, too fucked up to really wonder what was going to come next, or to have no sense of time whatsoever and being left to measure it in how many time those faceless sons of bitches poked you with something/forced something down your throat/ran another one of those "tests". Fifteen and they were older than the ground they walked on, older than all the adults and all the kids and birds and insects and mammals.

They spent their lives curled up, just a few inches too short to reach for each other across a broken floor, too far gone to reach out anyway if they had the means. They discarded these lives the moment _he_ came, with his mismatched eyes and Icarus smile.

That did not mean, however, that they were ever going to forget.


	4. Time doth run with calm and silent foot

**Time doth run with calm and silent foot**

_This one was written for the prompt _"_the concept of omerta" / __"almost deaf in the glare of the white sand ahead, the tiny gladiator, stuffing her shadow in her mouth as she goes"._

_The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for February 28, 2008._

_

* * *

  
_

She likes to think that it happened too fast, too fast for her to react. She tells herself that it was one of those things born out of blinking at the wrong moment, because she was sure – she _swore_ – that Rokudo Mukuro was the one person whom she would not, could not, stop watching. What she would only later admit was that it had, in fact, started slow, a painful wrenching, twisting out of her grip moment by moment, finger by finger, up and out of her hands.

"The half-breed recently contacted me. It appears as though Vongola is finally beginning to make all the right connections."

There is nothing but the two of them and the dream around them: the hot sand beneath her bare feet, the distant cry of seagulls and the constant crashing of the waves against rock and shore. She perceives everything, every grain against her skin and every shift in the scent of brine and broken shells carried by the wind – their corner of the dream world has always been her home, even more than the reality she leaves every time she closes her eyes. There are times when she wonders which world is more real, for colors and sensations always seem brighter in the palace of her own dreams.

"They are moving, Nagi. It's only a matter of time now."

He smiles at her, all lightness and grace to counteract the dizzying effect of mismatched eyes and a voice that never carries any real warm or amusement. She acknowledges the gesture with a respectful dip of her head. She wonders when he took to calling her by her first name rather the name he made for her, and the endearments he often lavished upon her whenever they were together. There are other things that she wonders about: why he chose a shoreline over their usual hidden lake, where he had been during his sudden and most recent disappearance, when will he decide that it was time for them to meet again.

Their regular meetings in the dream world used to be their ritual, the concrete acknowledgement of that which bound them together. They seemed to occur less frequently as the years went on, in tandem with the fact that she found herself lurking within the shadows of her own mind more often, watching her master walk at the side of Sawada Tsunayoshi through the split screen of their shared existence. He used to chafe at the very thought of being in the same room as the boy. As it was, she could no longer measure how long it had been since she had last heard him say anything negative about the Tenth and his pathetically human ways.

"…Can I trust you, Nagi? Will you do as I have asked you to do?"

_When did you decide to stay?_

_How did you fall in love with him?_

_Will you leave us behind?_

_If you go, will you let me follow you?_

She feels the need to answer his questions with other questions. She knows full well that she is a vessel but she possesses her own mind, and that he keeps her around precisely because he has allowed her to speak. She remains silent, however, and simply watches her master as he walks ankle-deep through the waves, a black-and-white figure against the brilliance of an imagined shoreline.

She remains silent not because she fears that he will not answer her, but because she knows that he will.


	5. Behind closed doors

**Behind closed doors.**

_The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for August 22, 2008._

_

* * *

  
_

She is only too aware of him moving inside of her as she touches herself, shifting just under her skin and curling about her heart – a warm presence, moist, like the feel of her own vagina against her fingers. It has been far too long since she has had any sort of release worthy of his approval, so she works in order to keep his attention.

"Mukuro-sama…"

_Open yourself up a little more, my dear. You aren't feeling it as much as you should._

His voice scratches across her thoughts the way a knife scrapes over skin, not hard enough to leave a mark but heavy enough for her to be fully capable of what it could do, with just a little more pressure. He shifts, nudging away the control of her hands and legs long enough to show her, exactly, the sort of thing he wants to see her do to herself. Chrome chokes back an embarrassed sound, but forces herself to watch how he moves her. A student must learn from the master, after all, even if they aren't exactly in that sort of relationship.

His laughter tells her that he approves of her actions, although it could also mean that he is amused, once again, at her expense.

_Try it like this,_ he murmurs, drawing her out of her thoughts – he has her now, with one hand parting the lips of her vagina and the other worming three fingers inside and out, at a rather compromising rhythm. She squirms against the sheets and obeys.


	6. Conjoined by mystery and fate

**Conjoined by mystery and fate**

_I'm not sure where it's written, but canonically, Chrome is said to dislike pineapples._

_The title for this one is taken from the 31 Days theme for January 2, 2008._

_

* * *

  
_

In essence, Rokudo Mukuro is not entirely sure why he chose Chrome in the first place. There had been others at the precise moment that he had needed a body, other children as lost and as broken as she was. It could have been anyone, really. It could have been someone better.

It takes years, then, for Mukuro to realize that he had quite possibly made the right decision. Years for him to watch as she becomes more like him yet separate from him. Years of living in her head, nudging her when he had to, surprised at the fact that he didn't have to nudge her along more. Her devotion had been nothing but a cute bonus back then, a convenience that allowed him the measure of control he needed without wasting his effort on possessing someone who obviously didn't want him around. Now it was apparently her devotion that served as his shield against everything that sought to destroy him.

Still, he _does _wish she could have inherited his love for pineapples.


	7. Hidden and open subcultures

**Hidden and open subcultures**

_The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for November 2, 2008._

_

* * *

  
_

They dream together often, crossing paths in the sleeping minds of strangers, manipulating the fragile glass of imagination to their liking as they walked along, sometimes talking, mostly silent in each other's company. Chrome is one to enjoy any moment in Mukuro's company, for she knows that it is a great privilege – she knows that there are so many other things that he could be doing, things involving his quiet campaign against the underworld, things that indulge his whims much better than her company would. Nonetheless, she _does_ have one sort of communal dream that she considers her favorite: the ones where she and Mukuro are doing nothing but play a piano piece for two. She always plays on the left, and he on the right: the accompaniment, and the main piece.

The place never changes (the music room of some unnamed Italian mansion), as does the time (a spring morning, haloed in gentle sunlight) nor the way they are arranged (side by side, him in white, her in black) – what shifts, then, is the melody, for Mukuro plays whenever strikes him at the moment and she is expected to improvise on the spot in order to follow them. She used to stumble, to wonder at the way his fingers fly across the keys and spin something beautiful out of whimsy and a chaos of sounds. Now, finding a way to complement him is second nature to her.

There is never any touch, any real physical contact beyond the press of his thighs against her own and the occasional brush of long hair against the back of her hand, but it is through the piano music that they become intimate, and through communicating without words that Chrome learns to read Mukuro as well as she can read herself.


	8. Roses can sprout in the concrete streets

**Roses can sprout in the concrete streets**

_The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for June 7, 2008._

_

* * *

  
_

To say that they went to school together wouldn't exactly be right – it is more like they walk to Kokuyo Academy from the same starting point, and happen to cross through the same areas along the same streets. Kaki Chikusa and Joushima Ken far ahead, keeping perfect pace with each other. Chrome Dukuro far behind them, clutching a leather bag that's nearly as tall as she is, booted feet hurrying down the pavement. Although the two boys carry themselves as though they weren't aware that someone was following them, an observant outsider would notice the way they speed up just a notch at every crossing, in the hopes that the light would turn and they'd put more distance between them and the strange girl that their leader seems to be ridiculously fond of. Suffice to say, they are not all that successful.

Chrome is a year below them and a floor down in the building, but Ken and Chikusa cross her classroom sometimes, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, on the way out to cut class in favor of packing in a little time in the arcade: hers is the seat farthest away from the blackboard, in a corner tucked almost out of sight. Arts and crafts, so she is always working on something when they spot her. For all the stammering and fidgeting that she does in their presence, her fingers are deft and steady, ordering her own personal universe into sharp folds and colors of her choice.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays Chrome is out with her class at the swimming pool, but they have never seen her do anything but sit ankle-deep in the water with her back against the chain-link fence, cut off from her classmates even as she's surrounded by their laughter, staring at some point on the horizon that only she seems to be able to see. The eyepatch is gone, but from where they are, Ken and Chikusa cannot see the gaping hole it conceals.

Because they skip the last period of mandatory service and general cleaning, they are always home before the general student populace in town – they snoop around once they enter their base, trying, in their own indirect way, to search for any trace of their leader, to see if he had been around, if he had left some sort of message. He may have told them that he would communicate through the girl when he needed to, but they don't trust her, this soft spoken illusionist with a quiet dislike for pineapples. She has too much of Mukuro in her and none of the memories that they share with him.

Chrome returns early in the evening and just a little after they are done scouring the place to their satisfaction and finding nothing – she always comes around with an armful of convenience store goods and a mouth full of apologies. They take the food, ignore the words. She eventually retreats, withdrawing to the corner of the room in order to do her homework, or maybe fuss over the trident that she brings all over the place. By the time Chikusa and Ken finish whatever it is they are doing, it is almost midnight and she's curled up like some mutated kitten, fast asleep. Ken grumbles about what an idiotic girl she is. Chikusa doesn't bother wasting his energy and dumps a blanket on her instead. It gets chilly in their hiding place, and their leader was bound to be displeased if he was forced to possess a vessel weak with the common cold.

She tries to thank them the next day, when the traffic lights aren't in their favor and the three of them are stuck at the same side of a pedestrian crossing, but the volume of Chikusa's music player's been cranked all the way up and Ken is too sleepy to care.


	9. Come up through the summer rain

**Come up through the summer rain.**

_Set sometime in the future, one where Tsuna decided that it was perfectly all right to free Mukuro from the Vendicare Prison and let him roam free._

_The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for August 1, 2009._

_

* * *

  
_

Rokudo Mukuro always visits her on the days when there is no one in the Vongola Mansion save the servants, the Vongola Tenth himself and his wife, and no other Guardian to protect the boss and his beloved save the Mist Guardian and her continuously questionable loyalties to the Family. He comes in, all long-limbed and languid and soaked right down to the bone, shaking his hair out and complaining lightly of the weather. She smiles at him, greets him in the Italian fashion (greeting, kiss to both cheeks), and promptly steps back to allow him into her rooms, caring little for the fact that he will drip all over the Persian carpet, the expensive furniture.

Their routine never changes. She asks if Mukuro-sama would like a towel and maybe a fresh change of clothes. He replies that it's quite all right for the moment, my dear, let's have some tea first. She rings for a maid and asks for the finest Oolong in the house. True enough, when she turns around, he's willed the wet out of his clothes and spun a towel out of thin air to dry his hair with. She promptly disappears just long enough to fetch her favorite brush from the dresser in her bedroom. The tea arrives, and after setting it in front of her mentor, she rounds behind the couch, pulls up a chair and reaches for the tie holding Mukuro's hair in place.

They don't talk about much of anything, mostly pleasantries that neither of them would ever give to anyone else but each other. Occasionally, Chrome mentions the Family – small specifics, nothing but the most important things that might in some way affect them. She does this even though Mukuro does not ask and used to say mildly that he did not particularly care, and it amuses Mukuro, but he does not call her on it. He only smiles, contributes nothing to the conversation, and focuses on the feel of her fingers, deft and light, threading through his hair. Her Italian is improving, he notes, much in the same fashion that an artist would step back from his work and admire the fine lines and blend of colors wrought by his own hand. He wonders if the others have anything to do with it.

Mukuro never stays for longer than an hour after she's finished with his hair and he's finished with the tea: there are things moving on the fringes of the mafia game with his name on it, and as much as the two of them are more than friends and lovers, he has pawns to make out of children and a world to rebuild in his image. Chrome understands this, and sees him off without protest, contenting herself with the sight of him walking away from her through the bedroom window, back into the dark and the rain.


	10. Lights out, I'll tell you fairy tales

**I****'ll keep the lights out, I'll tell you fairy tales.**

_Positioned sometime in a new future from the one in the TYL arc, particularly in one where Mukuro is in a coma after the shock of being removed from his tank. The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for March 16, 2009._

_

* * *

  
_

Every morning, Chrome Dokuro opens each and every one of the curtains over every single window, and then proceeds to open the windows themselves. It is not nearly as easy a task as one may be led to believe, for the curtain pulleys are grumpy with age and the latches are worse, but she applies herself to the task without complaint, and never asks for assistance. It is only after she is finished that she allows herself a break, which she takes at Rokudo Mukuro's bed side. Fifteen minutes of golden silence spent looking down at his face, and then she kisses him, greets him "good morning", and leaves. Before she leaves to perform her duties for the Family, she reminds the nurses about his IV drip, and thanks them for their hard work.

Sometime after lunch (a meal that is usually spent in the company of her Family, and occasionally with Chikusa and Ken), Chrome returns to the room. She checks the drip and the machinery, makes sure that everything is in order, and then settles herself, once more, at his bedside. She reads out the newspaper to Mukuro first, any and all articles that he may find interesting; she follows that ritual with updates on the Family and small little nothings that he always seemed fond of hearing from her. She leaves him again, about two hours before dinner. There are things she must do, jobs she must prepare for.

It is late in the evening by the time Chrome returns to the estate, and she delays just long enough to report to her Boss, remove her bloodied clothes, wash the stains of death from her skin and place herself in something far softer and more acceptable. She then comes back to Mukuro's rooms, with her latest selection from the library resting in one hand and a change of clothes for the morning in the other. The windows of his quarters have been shut by the maids, keeping the chill of the evening out of the room and away from its single and most vulnerable occupant. This time, after she's switched off the main lights and turned the light from the lamps down low, she does not pull up a chair by his bedside – she slips out of her shift and, while she is completely naked, slips between the sheets. Then, while she is curled up against his body, she reads him a story, picks up wherever she left off last. Later, after she's closed the book and shut off her eyes, she rests her head right over his breast and falls asleep to the sound of his heartbeat.


End file.
